At what point do you jump?

Hard decisions with revolutionary consequences

Part I: The analogy—9/11

This week, I wrote an article about the other side, life after death. If you believe in life after death, then that is some comfort in situations where life during life comes to an end in a tragic manner. The 11 September 2001 attacks in New York, which focused on the World Trade Center, saw the demise there of about 2,600 people, some of whom precipitated their advanced demise by jumping from the conflagration that was caused when the aeroplanes hit the towers.

Unlike the victims of the Oceangate submersible disaster, who were dead before they were wet or the victims of Air India flight 171, who were airborne for 17 seconds before crashing in Ahmedabad, India, the WTC jumpers had an anguished choice: to burn alive or be crushed by the building itself, engulfed in flames, or to die by hurtling themselves from the building and being splattered on the ground below.

Those who witnessed the people who jumped may have speculated on what decision they themselves would have taken, and in truth none of them could know unless they found themselves in precisely the same circumstances. We can assume one thing: that if those who jumped could have seen any other way out of their predicament that would have ensured their survival, they would have taken it. And the question that poses itself even now, 24 years on, is how hard they tried. Did they even have any comprehension of what it was that had just happened? Far from understanding that they’d been subjected to a terrorist attack, how many of them even realised they’d been struck by an aircraft?

The cause of their predicament was of crucial importance to those whose job it would be to investigate the attacks and to devise means to avoid future such attacks. It is inherent in the science of prevention that one investigate with accuracy the causes of accidents, whether fortuitous or deliberate. But, to the victims of such events, it is the situation in the here and now that concerns them, and how to escape it and, if escape prove impossible, how to end it with the least pain.

Part II: The problem—the provision of armaments

Having established my analogy, I now wish to turn my focus to a completely different scenario, but one in which the same considerations have something to say. A similar quandary that requires hard decisions, which, for some, may not mean an escape but simply a resolution that foreshortens their pain. Whether this constitutes a problem is a matter of opinion. Let’s assume it is a problem, if only because a lot of people seem to be writing about it as if it were a problem.

The past months have seen shocking news of armed conflict emerge from many quarters, but let me focus particularly on Israel and the United States. The US has the largest and best equipped army in the world. Despite their tactical failures in certain theatres of war, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, and their failure fully to arm their allies in existential conflicts in countries in which they do not play a direct role, the classic current case being Ukraine, the US has nonetheless booked significant success in one policy area in which it is playing a supply and strategic intelligence role, and that is Israel. Besides that overseas theatre, the US government has seen fit recently to deploy troops in theatres involving civil unrest, particularly the deployment of the National Guard of California and US Marines in the city of Los Angeles.

Whilst a US marine presents a formidable opponent to an ordinary protesting citizen even if the marine is not armed, it is the firearms that such soldiers possess that render them a yet more formidable opponent, even from a distance longer than their arm’s length. In fact, the whole controversy surrounding the continued supply of Israel from the United States with armaments has centred on whether or not the US is in breach of its own laws by supplying them. The supply of armaments to Israel is about the only policy area of Joseph Biden that Donald Trump has not criticised. Instead, he has doubled down on it.

Now, without wanting to appear simplistically simplistic, it would be hard for the US to supply Israel with armaments that it does not possess, or indeed to arm its own troops with non-existent arms. That said, it possesses a lot. How many, I cannot say, and for present purposes I don’t need to say, except to say that, regardless of how many it has in stock, that stock cannot be limitless. One day, it will run out, unless more are produced to replace the ones that are used. Are you with me so far?

Part III: The manufacture of weapons

If we apply the logic to guns such as is applied to razors and to computer printers and even to light bulbs, we enter a field of what is known as planned obsolescence. Light bulbs are slightly different to the other three, in that the first light bulbs would, in proper circumstances, last forever. That being in the contrary interests of those manufacturers making light bulbs, they made a cartel in the early days—the Phoebus Cartel—by which they endeavoured to reduce the lifespan of a light bulb, and even imposed penalties on those who did not reduce their light bulbs’ lifespans sufficiently. These penalties were even actually applied, because a light bulb with a longer life would compete—unfairly as it happened—with the other members of the cartel. Razors, printers and, by extension, guns, are slightly different. Whilst there is some profit to be made from selling these items, the real money comes when the acquirer goes to equip his or her razor with razorblades, their printer with ink and their gun with bullets. The more bullets are shot, the more they need to be replaced. That means that someone who wants to fire a gun but has no more bullets cannot fire the gun. You will still be following me, I suppose?

I have no idea how guns or bullets or bombs are made. I’ve seen them shot and I’ve seen them explode, but how they are put together is something I don’t know, and, again, for present purposes I don’t need to know. Let me guess. They are made by skilled workers in factories using machinery and a certain amount of computerisation. But—and I’m still guessing—the computerisation and the automation and machinery cannot themselves make these things without the intervention of the skilled workers. If any one of these elements were missing, production would be hampered.

So, here is a simplistically simplistic question: why do armaments workers work in armaments?

The range of answers to that question is quite wide, and could encompass the following answers, which are nothing but a brainstorming session:

• because they love violence and want to be associated with it in their work;

• they have a long track record within the industry and have acquired knowledge that means they can command a wage in that industry that is higher than what they could command elsewhere;

• it’s the only job they could get;

• they like the job because of its patriotic overtones;

• they feel supported by central federal government, which is a ready customer for the products they produce, which ensures job security;

• they don’t particularly care what happens to the products they manufacture, as long as they have a wage at the end of the month;

• they have no thought for the capitalist system they support with their labour, as long as they have a wage to go home with;

• whilst they know that their brothers and cousins could end up having to shoot the weapons they manufacture in the event that the US went to war, they are happy that they are in production and will not themselves ever be asked to shoot these weapons.

Part IV: Why people make weapons is not the same as why weapons are made

Part III looks at some of the reasons why a person might want to work in weapons manufacturing and the considerations that might go through their head when deciding to opt for a job in that sector.

In Part IV, I want to look more not at why people work in that industry, but why that industry even exists. It fundamentally exists for the defence of the nation. I suppose that just about every nation produces armaments, to defend it against other nations. And that sounds logical, except it isn’t really, because it is well known that some armaments are pretty ineffectual against other armaments. If nations really wanted to defend themselves against other, more hostile nations, they would all have nuclear weapons. But they don’t. Instead of all having nuclear weapons, they have treaties with other countries that do have nuclear weapons and which they hope and trust will not attack them.

They also have guns and things to shoot terrorists and people who won’t stop when the police cry out to them to “Stop!”, but as far as the defence of the nation is concerned, most nations’ defence hangs by a pretty thin thread. When one considers that there is barely an international border in the whole world that is not the product of war or the threat of war, one could take the view that the nation, at the very heart of the concept of which lies the defence of its borders, exists in more or less an aleatory state. Even leaving aside Ukraine and Sudan for a moment, the recent spats between India and Pakistan, between Thailand and Cambodia, between Israel and Iran, and within the United States in California, show how fragile the existence of an independent nation or sub-part of a nation can be. So, imagine if the people who engage in spats such as these had no bullets.

There is a shortage of bullets in Europe. At one time, at least, they were being fired in Ukraine faster than European manufacturers could replace them. Less concerned with Ukraine running out of firepower, the nations of Europe started to fret about whether they would run out of firepower themselves. To date, they haven’t but I think they’re still counting their bullets.

The defence of the nation against other, nasty nations is the prime argument for having an armaments industry and for having cooperation between nations that are each able to combine their armaments industries and provide themselves and each other with effective defence.

But why do nations want effective defence? The US has effective defence, and the UK has it too. Germany has it, Italy has it. Pretty much everywhere has it. National defence is a high-expenditure, high-result, high-effectiveness state of being. Despite all the spats referred to above, the permanence of international boundaries is pretty high. So, why are so many of the world’s people living in penury? Living miserable existences, hand to mouth, pay cheque to pay cheque? Would they be so much worse off if their country were to be invaded?

There is a clear mismatch here. Those who work in the arms industry and those who own the arms industry have every reason to support the arms industry, because it serves in the defence of the nation. It’s the defence of the nation for which the nation has a flag and a national anthem. A song and a bit of textile is enough to rally the entire population behind the nation’s arms industry. But the nation whose defence is thereby assured does not redistribute the benefits of such defence to the people of the nation thereby defended. What, instead, it does is deploy the poor of the nation in using the armaments that are produced by the arms industry in attacking other nations or in attacking those involved in civil unrest within the nation. The people who reap the most benefit from the arms industry are the owners of the arms industry and those in politics who are able to threaten other countries with unleashing their armies, supplied by their arms industries, unless those other countries toe the politicians’ line. An egregious example of this was Indonesia being controlled by the US during the 1950s to 1970s.

Part V: When do you jump?

If it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now: armies are not simply there for national defence. In the US, they are there for controlling the civilian population as well. One cannot observe the events of a month or so ago in Los Angeles and dismiss them as an exception, or a blip on the screen. They happened, and they are a portent of what will very likely happen again.

The benefits of the arms industry quite clearly flow to capitalists, billionaire oligarchs who work with government to further their own interests, which are basically to conduct wars. The more bombs get dropped, the happier they are, just as razor makers are happy when you shave a lot.

So, when all is burning around you with such ferocity, and ICE is upping the ante with a huge budget increase and masked men and marauding against citizens on the street in full daylight, you can try to persuade yourself and your fellow citizens for as long as you will that everything is normal and is going to work out just fine. That these are all just little blips on the screen and that the basic system of how work, employment, defence and armies works is still safely within the normal parameters.

Or you can say to yourself, “I’m not sure what just hit the building: it may have been a bomb or it may have been an American Airlines jetliner, but it’s getting mighty hot in here and I can’t find the way to the stairs. I can try to douse the flames, but I only have this silly little fire extinguisher, or I can submit to them and become toast, or I can smash a window and jump to my death.”

In 1939, British politician Sir Stafford Cripps said this:

Money cannot make armaments. Armaments can only be made by the skill of the British working class, and it is the British working class who would be called upon to use them. Today you have the most glorious opportunity that the workers have ever had if you will only use the necessity of capitalism in order to get power yourselves. The capitalists are in your hands. Refuse to make munitions, refuse to make armaments, and they are helpless. They would have to hand the control of the country over to you.

It was not well received. It sounds like madness. That the British workers in the arms industry should strike at the time of the nation’s greatest peril sounds extraordinary. I think it sounds so extraordinary that it is worthy of a deeper look.

One of the most powerful arguments for producing arms is the fact that other nations produce arms. Yet, from a height in 1986 of over 12,000 nuclear warheads, the US and the USSR managed to reduce their nuclear stockpiles to less than 2,000. Disarmament is a possibility. That programme did not especially save the world, because the numbers left are still enough to destroy us all several times over. What has saved the world from nuclear disaster to date has been an extraordinary stretch of good luck: because the aeroplanes that carry these things keep crashing. Some of their payloads have never been recovered. Some attacks detected by radar systems have only narrowly been deemed false alarms by Soviet military officers. Stanislav Petrov saved the world twice, and died after a nervous breakdown, mainly contributed to by the responsibility he had shouldered.

But, to date no one has yet tried the tactic of ceasing production of arms altogether. Suggest it, and it will be met with gasps of consternation. I can almost hear them from you now. Even those who advocate nuclear disarmament, soften the harshness of their campaign by advocating the retention of conventional arms. Because we must always be able to defend ourselves. But what if we didn’t?

What if arms workers struck and refused to make armaments and weapons? What if the principled stand taken by workers in one country, in a bid to de-escalate the world’s belligerence and to take the capitalist oligarchs down a peg or two were recognised in other countries, who followed suit? The precise opposite of an arms race: a race to the bottom.

What incentive would they have? It would be like jumping from the World Trade Center, instead of burning to death in its flames. Because the arms they produce have only one destiny, and the only solace they can take from that destiny is the fact that they shall be neither required to shoot the weapons nor will they be their target. But, if war broke out, the armaments factories in which they work would be the first targets of enemy fire.

If life is a gamble, then the gambler should factor in all the elements that affect his wager, and not just some of them. Who can say why the jumpers at the WTC jumped? Could it be that they could not find the stairs, or that they knew the stairs were destroyed, or could it be that they saw the end and jumped because the decision had got too complicated by then?

I can imagine a strike in the arms industry to be a very ugly affair. It might even cost some their lives. But as oligarchy seems to be the form of US government now, and probably is also becoming it elsewhere, leftist commentators are united in one view: that the only concentrated force that can stand up to them is organised labour. When you couple that conclusion with the enormous financial interests that oligarchs have in manufacturing weaponry and that governments have in firing it, then it would seem least detrimental to the ordinary man and woman in the street and most advantageous to the cause of organised labour as a whole, to strike in the arms industry.

The brickbats would be many, and mostly come from those unable to see beyond the end of a gun to what benefits can be reaped by not firing them.

I quipped almost nonchalantly to a fellow Substacker this week: why is it that you can’t have a revolution without firing a gun? First, what I propose here would achieve a revolution and would not involve the revolutionaries firing a gun. But the counter-revolutionaries cannot be counted on in any revolution. We saw that with United Fruit in Colombia. What United Fruit showed is that killing strikers cows them. And so revolutionaries must believe enough in their revolution to not be cowed by their fellow-revolutionaries’ deaths.

The social photographer Nick Hedges said during his lifetime, “I always maintain I was fortunate to be born when I was, because in the 60s we believed a revolution was possible.” I don’t know if Hedges was right. I think that the revolution he envisaged through his stark photographs of run-down city centres in Britain was stymied by the new Thatcherite neoliberal movement, which promised to sweep away inner city destitution by another means than revolution. It is possible to have your revolution hijacked.

But for the arms industry’s workers to resolve to defeat the aims of their own industry through non-cooperation—well, that is a revolution, and it is one that would benefit not just them, ultimately, but all of society, and perhaps even all societies. We are driven to destroy our world at the muzzle of a gun. If we fire back, we’re done for. If we refuse to cooperate, we’re done for. If we do as we’re told, we’re done for. At what point do we jump?